Landmarks
The most famous site of the Jewish Quarter is The Western Wall, a portion of the massive retaining wall built by King Herod in the 1st century BCE, expanding the Temple Mount that once contained the Temple of Jerusalem and today is home to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. It consists of huge ashlar blocks that have been in place for two millennia. It is a major site for pilgrimage for Jewish people from all over the world, and is also a major tourist attraction for people of all faiths. Visitors insert handwritten prayers into the interstices between the stones. Numerous worshipers read Psalms in front of the wall and bar Mitzvahs are celebrated there.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)
Famous quotes containing the word landmarks:
“Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings—crowded, active, thick.... But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands are few.”
—Larry McMurtry (b. 1936)